Category: Don’t Read this Book! It may cause a mid-life crisis

While people debate whether we have yet reached the tipping point of global warming, I feel very profoundly with every fiber of my being that there is a different tipping point we have already eclipsed. We have already begun the transformation of civilization into a new state of conscious awakening that does not merely solve, but transcends, all of the confluent crises our civilization is on a collision course with.

There is a profoundly powerful new faith-based-spirituality that has emerged into our cultural consciousness. It is rooted in the dawning awareness that consciousness creates reality.

If you can dream it, you can do it.

The idea that consciousness itself is truly the fundamental substance of the universe has been sown into the soil of cultural awareness in too many ways to ignore any longer. And the seeds have already begun to sprout.

Culture may try to bury this idea without realizing it’s a seed that sprouts in fertile minds.

I am not an “expert.” I hope you don’t hold it against me. I have no formal academic training in physics, philosophy, sociology, psychology, anthrolopology or economics. That is a lot of–ologies one can potentially be Expert in, isn’t it?

Excerpt from, “Think Outside the Thought”

I graduated from a University with a liberal arts degree then picked myself up, brushed myself off and got about the important work of teaching myself how to think. That’s called autodidactism.

College is good at a few things, foremost of which may be learning specific skills the human race has developed over the past 8,000 years or so. Unfortunately, one of the most valuable skills we have developed that is not taught at any University I know of, is the ability and desire to think independently.

If I had the wherewithal to found my own university, I believe I would name it The School of Thought. Students could graduate with a degree in Peace of Mind.

But alas, modern academia is a far cry from the idyllic institution of my imagination.

In college, research papers I poured laboriously over, embedded with intellectual fodder, imbued with blood, sweat and tears, never got very high marks. They got lots of marks, usually in red.

In fact, the more didactic the transcription of a professor’s lecture, the better grades the papers were given. While these exercises in rote thought seem to demand the undivided attention of many an undergraduate for many an unforgiving hour, I slapped them together at midnight and got As across the board.

This willy-nilly mentality is as much all the rage as excessive alcohol consumption among undergraduates whose mantra is “Cs get degrees.”

If I learned anything at all from these exercises in futility, it was that hard work isn’t a pre-requisite for graduating college. And thinking even less so.

The fall of (Western) Man was not from grace, but down a rabbit hole that he thought himself into. He constructed a box and climbed in. There have always been some of us trying to claw our way out. There have been quite a few more who don’t see the box at all. Yet the “struggle” to get out is just as unhelpful as being ignorant of its existence.

The truth is, there is no box. Not really, anyway. The only thing we’re stuck in is our own minds, our minds which are so conditioned that we can no longer see the forest for the trees, or the world for the box. Our perception of reality is informed by experience as our world conforms itself to the mold of our own design like silly putty in a red rubber egg.

One of the most out-of-the-box thinkers I have ever read, aTranspersonal Psychologist, Joseph Chilton Pierce, claims there is a “crack in the cosmic egg,” by which we can escape the box, climb back out of the rabbit hole. The real rub, though, is this isn’t a box or a hole with any boundaries that can be easily experienced by the few senses we recognize.

Our minds have simply been so addled by television, mass media, and the homogenization of shared experience that we are desperately close to a precipice beyond which we will no longer be able to conceive anything that doesn’t have a direct physical manifestation within our nearly closed loop paradigm.

That explains why so many of us don’t recognize box we’re in. It also explains why those who do see it become obsessed with trying to escape it. Once we become aware of it, their minds seize upon the possibility of a new reality that and think, aha! I see the box! Now I must plan my escape! But isn’t that a validation of the very worldview we’re trying to fight against? The worldview of giving special treatment in your mind to that which you can see.

I’m now aware of this box! I must fight against it! Why? You weren’t fighting against it before you were aware of it. Why start now?

If your head isn’t spinning already, you may want to get it examined by an expert. It might be screwed on too tight.

There’s another alternative. Now that you see the box, don’t expend all your energy clawing at the corners. It will be wasted effort. The box is here to stay.

Historically, every plebeian revolution which seeks to overthrow the aristocracy, it ultimately occurs (after 10, 50, 100 or 500 years) that the plebeians evolve into a new aristocracy. Revolutions don’t work because all they do is turn the tables. They never get out of the kitchen. Civilization has in fact seen so many revolutions that it is by now well-fortified against them. It knows how to defend itself from a plebeian revolt. More, better, bigger guns. And it works. That’s not to say that Revolutions aren’t won by Revolutionaries and Heroes or lost by Tyrants and Traitors (distinctions made solely by history books).

But it is to say that no revolution has ever been won or lost by either side. The side that emerges victorious simply loses more slowly than their opponent. The fact is, by winning, we are learning to beat the other guy at his own game. But both sides are rolling the same dice, moving around the same board. And it’s deja-vu all over again and again and again. David becomes Goliath. So what’s the solution?

I see the box. The box is made of thoughts and I see the need to change the mindset of the world. What do I do? Simple. Think outside the thought. Think outside the sphere.

If your head isn’t spinning already, you may want to get it examined by an expert. It might be screwed on too tight.

But before we begin the dizzying search for the invisible walls of thought that surround us, penetrate us, bind our civilization together, let’s take a step forward….

Far from the young and naïve college student who dreamed of merely escaping our corrupt culture, I have now come to believe, profoundly, deeply, that we have created a beautifully complex, robust, dynamic civilization.

We can transmit ideas almost at the speed of thought across the globe via the magic of the Internet. We can transport ourselves at the speed of sound across those same distances.

The dreams we can achieve using the miraculous-seeming technologies Western ingenuity has conceived of is truly astonishing and profound. We have built a civilization that has transcended Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. We have the technology to meet and exceed the basic needs of every single human on the planet.

We live in a world where hunger need not exist. In America, we waste, by some estimates, at least 50% of the food we produce.

Grocery stores select only the most perfect-looking produce and discard the rest.

Unsold food goes into dumpsters at the end of the day from restaurants and grocery stores alike. And in many municipalities, laws are in place preventing those foods from being given to the homeless. It’s patently absurd. A good lawyer could quite literally devise a way for this level of absurdity to be patented in our legal system.

The food we waste is more than enough to feed every person on the planet. The technology is there. The motivation simply isn’t. Our motivation is for profit, solely that. Our civilization is miraculous. Let’s do our damndest to keep it. Let it be subsumed no longer by the sickness of greed. Let’s change our mindset before it really is too late. Before we go the way of Rome, or Atlantis, or any other sufficiently advanced civilization from History or Mythology. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. Let’s change our mindset before it’s too late. That’s all that needs to change. Just our mindset. It’s so simple. Changing our mindset starts here, now, with you and me.

“The white man is corrupted by the sickness of greed.”—The Last of the Mohicans, 1992 film adaptation

Change the media you consume.

Change your mindset.

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